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New submitter titanium93 writes “For months, dozens of people could not use their keyless entry systems to unlock or start their cars when parked in the vicinity of the eight-story Regents bank building in Hollywood, FL. Once the cars were towed to the dealership for repair, the problem went away. The problem resolved itself when police found equipment on the bank’s roof that was broadcasting a bootleg radio station. A detective and an FCC agent found the equipment hidden underneath an air conditioning chiller. The man who set up the station has not been found, but he faces felony charges and fines of at least $10,000 if he is caught. The radio station was broadcasting Caribbean music around the clock on 104.7 FM.”

PolygamousRanchKid writes “Forget texting while driving. German police say they nabbed a driver who had wired his Ford station wagon with an entire mobile office. Saarland state police said Friday the 35-year-old man was pulled over for doing 130 kph (80 mph) in a 100 kph zone while passing a truck Monday. Built on a wooden frame on his passenger seat they found a laptop on a docking station tilted for easy driver access, a printer, router, wireless internet stick, WLAN antenna, and an inverter to power it all.” I’ve driven some long trips with a similar passenger-seat setup (minus the printer). but of course for use only while stopped. Since the police in this case had no evidence that the rig was being used while driving, the driver was ticketed only for speeding and for having unsecured items. Really, it seems like something that Skymall should offer in neater form; now I regret not picking up a surplus police cruiser computer when they were in stock at the local Goodwill.

Hugh Pickens writes writes “Reuters reports that astronauts at the International Space Station ran into problems after removing the station’s 100-kg power-switching unit, one of four used in a system that distributes electrical power generated by the station’s solar array wings, and were stymied after repeated attempts to attach the new device failed when a bolt jammed, preventing astronauts from hooking it up into the station’s power grid. Japanese Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide got the bolt to turn nine times but engineers need 15 turns to secure the power-switching unit. ‘We’re kind of at a loss of what else we can try,’ said astronaut Jack Fischer at NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston after more than an hour of trouble-shooting. ‘If you guys have any thoughts or ideas or brilliant schemes on what we can do, let us know.’ Hoshide suggested using a tool that provides more force on bolts, but NASA engineers are reluctant to try anything that could make the situation worse and as the spacewalk slipped past seven hours, flight controllers told the astronauts to tether the unit in place, clean up their tools and head back into the station’s airlock. NASA officials says the failure to secure the new unit won’t disrupt station operations but it will force engineers to carefully distribute electrical power from three operating units to various station systems and says another attempt to install the power distributor could come as early as next week if engineers can figure out what to do with the stubborn bolt. ‘We’re going to figure it out another day,’ says Fischer.”

New submitter BMOC writes “Anthony Watts of Surfacestations project (crowdsourced research) has finally yielded some discussion worthy results (PDF). He uses a siting classification system developed by Michel Leroy for Meteofrance in 1999 that was improved in 2010 to quantify the effect of heat sinks and sources within the thermometer viewshed by calculation of the area- weighted and distance-weighted impact of biasing elements to calculate both raw and gridded 30 year trends for each surveyed station, using temperature data from USHCNv2. His initial claims are that station siting is impacting the surface temperature record significantly, and NOAA adjustments are exacerbating that problem, not helping. Whether you agree with his results or not, recognize that this method of research is modern and worth your participation in the review. Poke holes in publicly sourced and presented research all you can, that’s what makes this method useful.”

MarkWhittington writes “With the flight of the Shenzhou 9, which includes the first docking between a Chinese spacecraft and a prototype space station module, a renewed debate has arisen over the implications of Chinese space feats. China is planning a large space station by the end of this decade. It has expressed the desire to land people on the moon sometime in the next decade. Scientists, foreign policy experts and journalists debate whether China has supplanted the U.S. as a space power and whether that matters. ‘In reality, the implications of China’s move could be a much cooler third option: a new space race between the Chinese government and U.S. startups. While China is 50 years behind the U.S. government, they are much more comparable to U.S. companies. It was only a couple of weeks ago that SpaceX made history by becoming the first private company to successfully dock a space module to a station in orbit. This means they are roughly 10-15 years behind the Chinese government, but they could gain fast.’”

It has been fashionable lately to do some head scratching over Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, which we now know came just weeks before the social network released a camera app of its own that looked a lot like, well, Instagram. But there’s an argument to be made that Facebook owes no apologies to its shareholders. Maybe CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s move to buy Instagram was borderline brilliant.

Writing for TheStreet.com, Rocco Pendola compares the acquisition to a strategy once favored by big radio station owners like Clear Channel and Citadel.

“Imagine a major city with just one FM station targeting 18-to-34-year-old men with alternative music. It does well in the market, which suggests there might be room for another FM music station of the same, or similar, format that goes after the same demographic,” Pendola wrote. “Instead of sitting around to wait for a competitor to flip the switch on the same type of station, the owner of the existing station changes format on another one of its properties, introducing a new station that goes after the same 18-to-34-year-old male audience.”

In other words, Facebook is probably expecting that Instagram will cannibalize some users from its new phone app and vice versa. But it no longer matters: All of the revenue stays with Facebook, and it no longer has to figure out how to convert the 40 million people who already use and like Instagram. Meanwhile, any app maker thinking to enter the market may reconsider, as the market may be close to saturation.

“I’m surprised nobody – at least that I know of – has made this logical connection,” Pendola wrote. “It’s probably because they’ve been too busy jumping on the now cosmopolitan bandwagon of Facebook hate.”

Indeed, while the tech press is still by-and-large embracing Facebook, the financial press has quickly tied Facebook to the whipping post. The release of Facebook Camera was seen as proof positive that Zuckerberg et al were capable of building a world-changing social network but not capable of running a publicly traded company.

“Someone please explain to me why this makes sense,” Anthony DeRosa of Reuters wrote about the Facebook Camera launch. “Producing an inferior product must have cost money and certainly must have taken time to develop. Even if the app were developed before Facebook bought Instagram, it would have been less damaging for Facebook to pretend that it had never existed than to confuse the marketplace by introducing two competing products from the same company.”

Facebook is not commenting on the acquisition, as the Instagram deal has not closed. The Wall Street Journal noted that with the ongoing slump in Facebook’s share prices, the deal is now worth less than $1 billion.

Hexydes writes “Early in the morning (5:53 am EST) on May 26th, 2012, NASA gave the go-ahead for the Expedition 31 crew to begin the procedure to open the hatch on the Dragon capsule, now directly attached to the ISS. ‘The hatch opening begins four days of operations to unload more than 1,000 pounds of cargo from the first commercial spacecraft to visit the space station and reload it with experiments and cargo for a return trip to Earth. It is scheduled for splashdown several hundred miles west of California on May 31. Wearing protective masks and goggles, as is customary for the opening of a hatch to any newly arrived vehicle at the station, Pettit entered the Dragon with Station Commander Oleg Kononenko. The goggles and masks will be removed once the station atmosphere has had a chance to mix air with the air inside the Dragon itself.’ Here is a video of the procedure.”

After a flawless launch on May 22, the SpaceX Dragon capsule has become the first commercial spacecraft to berth at the International Space Station. After a flyby last night, the capsule approached the station, and station flight engineers Don Pettit and Andre Kuipers brought the vehicle to berth with the station’s robotic arm. The capsule was bolted to the station’s Harmony module at 12:02 PM Eastern Time.

This first flight delivered non-critical cargo for the crew of ISS Expedition 31. It’s mainly a test mission for SpaceX’s capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket that delivered it to orbit. Everything has gone off without a hitch.

The successful flight of Dragon paves the way for the first private, manned spaceflight. In addition to cargo, the SpaceX capsule is designed to carry up to seven astronauts, meaning that Dragon missions launched by the Falcon 9 rocket can help take over for the now-retired space shuttle.

Dragon’s hatches will open on Saturday morning, and the station crew will board to conduct some docked operations. Flight engineers Pettit, Kuipers and Joe Acaba will appear on NASA TV at 11:25 AM Eastern on Saturday to discuss the first private space flight to the station.

“Looks like we caught a Dragon by the tail.” – Astronaut Don Pettit after capturing @SpaceX Dragon capsule with ISS robotic arm.